Wrongly issued “tender ballot papers” will be counted

The Solomon Islands Electoral Commission has made a decision to validate tendered ballot papers cast wrongly into ballot boxes instead of the ordinary ballot papers at yesterday’s joint election.

Chief Electoral Commission Jasper Anisi this afternoon revealed that there were incidents across the country where tender ballot papers were issued to voters instead of the ordinary ones.

“When polling stations opened– some of the presiding officers instead of issuing original ordinary ballot papers they issued the tender ballot papers,” he said.

Each constituency was issued with 25 tender ballot papers. 

Tender ballot papers are only issued if ballot papers are wrongly ticked or someone has voted in the place of another voter due to mistakes. And they should be kept separately in envelopes.

However, Anisi said, in this circumstance the presiding officer issued the tender ballot paper as an ordinary ballot paper so the voter took the paper and cast it into the ballot box. 

“That brings the question to the commission on whether that is valid or not. The commission has made a decision to validate all the tender ballot papers in the ballot box,” the CEO confirmed.

Anisi said the commission made the decision not to punish the voter.

He said this happened across the country and this could be because of the pressure in the morning. 

Anisi confirmed that the issue only happened with the first ones in the morning and when they realised they changed to using the ordinary ballot paper